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During their meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan today, representatives of the Armenian All-national Movement (HHSh) Party presented their objections regarding the draft constitutional amendments and heard the arguments in favor of the draft new Constitution, HHSh representative Alexander Arzumanyan said in an interview with Panorama.am. “We will continue the process,” he added.

Consultations are underway in the presidential residence: President Serzh Sargsyan is meeting with members of various political forces to discuss the constitutional reform. As the presidential press service reported earlier, as part of those consultations S. Sargsyan met today with Armenian All-National Movement representatives Alexander Arzumanyan, Ararat Zurabyan and David Arakelyan.

When commenting on the outcome of their meeting with the head of state, Ararat Zurabyan told Panorama.am: “We presented our approaches. I think on the whole, they are acceptable to the authorities. I am sure the process and work will continue. Discussions are also scheduled in the National Assembly. This is when we are going to present our final position”.

He reminded us that earlier HHSh spoke in favor of a switch to a parliamentary model of government, which is proposed by the draft new Constitution.

“I think that the issues we have voiced should be formulated somehow,” Zurabyan noted.

In his words, they spoke about the absence of bodies of regional self-government (there are only bodies of local self-government) and holding spontaneous assemblies.

“We want everything to be specified. For example, the current Constitution says that everyone has the right to spontaneous assembly. We do not want any restrictions to be included in the Constitution in this respect. It is a right that should be preserved. We also spoke about a stable majority so that there could be no rough wordings here,” Zurabyan said noting they submitted respective proposals related to all those problems.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan submitted on August 21 the draft amendments in the Constitution of Armenia to the National Assembly. The draft amendments had been developed by the Commission on Constitutional Reforms under Armenian President.

Vardan Poghosyan, a member of the Commission, has been appointed as official representative of Armenian President for presentation of the draft amendments to the Constitution in the National Assembly of Armenia. This week President Serzh Sargsyan is holding consultations with representatives of political parties regarding the approaches stated in the draft Constitution. The head of state also instructed the Commission on Constitutional Reforms under Armenian President to continue the dialog with the Venice Commission (VC) over those issues indicated in the VC’s preliminary opinion, around which no agreed solutions have been found so far.